Archive for the 'Technology' Category
A Future for Drones: Automated Killing
September 20th, 2011Via: Washington Post: One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After […]
Only Enterprise and Developers Can Bypass Windows Store for Metro Apps
September 19th, 2011“If Apple’s transitioning of OSX to an iOS-like experience is dumb, Microsoft wants to be dumber with Windows 8.” How long until both Microsoft and Apple require approval for software to run in their full operating systems? You think I’m nuts—and then it happens. Via: Ars Technica: Microsoft will restrict general distribution of Metro apps […]
Japanese Government to Invite Foreigners Who Have Large Facebook and Twitter Networks to Tohoku So That They Can Tell Their Followers “Japan Is Safe”
September 19th, 2011Do they get to bring their own dosimeters? Via: EX-SKF: Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have started to make preparations for inviting people from overseas who disseminate information via the social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as part of the countermeasures against “baseless rumors” that have damaged sales of Japanese agricultural products and tourism […]
What Will Video Games Will Be Like in a Few Decades?
September 16th, 2011Here’s an example of a video game that I thought was fun when I was young: Choplifter (1982): Now, nearly three decades later, take a look at some gameplay footage from the upcoming, Battlefield 3: As I was watching that Battlefield 3 trailer, I found myself squinting, blinking and setting the volume to mute. (Maybe […]
U.K. Researchers to Test “Artificial Volcano” for Geoengineering the Climate
September 15th, 2011Via: Scientific American: Next month, researchers in the U.K. will start to pump water nearly a kilometer up into the atmosphere, by way of a suspended hose. The experiment is the first major test of a piping system that could one day spew sulfate particles into the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 kilometers, supported […]
Zero Day Industrial Control System Exploits Published
September 15th, 2011Via: SC Magazine: A security researcher has disclosed a laundry list of unpatched vulnerabilities and detailed proof-of-concept exploits that allow hackers to completely compromise major industrial control systems. Security researcher Luigi Auriemma disclosed the attacks against six SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems including US giant Rockwell Automation. The step-by-step exploits allowed attackers to […]
NRO Will Display Ancient Spy Satellites
September 15th, 2011Via: The Space Review: Later this week the National Reconnaissance Office is going to reveal information on two of its Cold War era satellite programs, HEXAGON and GAMBIT, and publicly unveil hardware that has been classified for decades. GAMBIT was started in 1960, with a first launch in 1963. HEXAGON started in 1966, with a […]
‘New Emotion Detector Can See When We’re Lying’
September 14th, 2011[???] Via: BBC: A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say. The computerised system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms. Researchers say the system could be a powerful aid to security services. It successfully discriminates between […]
Microsoft’s Desperation to Catch Apple in the Crackpad Race to the Land of Dumb and Dumber
September 14th, 2011As you guys know, I’m not much of a fan of any operating system. I find Windows XP to be the least bad for what I do. Windows 7 is usable. Mac OSX is usable (but doesn’t support MultiCharts, an application I use daily). Linux still sucks, on the client side, and I guess that […]
The $300 Million Cable That Will Save Traders Milliseconds
September 13th, 2011Now with more Flashcrash! Via: Telegraph: In the high-speed world of automated financial trading, milliseconds matter. So much so, in fact, that a saving of just six milliseconds in transmission time is all that is required to justify the laying of the first transatlantic communications cable for 10 years at a cost of more than […]
